Riding again: Building up the miles

Hello again.

That title makes it sound like I’ve done loads. I haven’t. But what I have done is take a definitive step forward and started to ride a bit more regularly, and so far, without any excessive lower back spasms post-ride.

I’m through the first block of treatment, which lasted a month, where I was seeing Stefaan twice a week. In that time he has repeatedly manipulated my body, allowing me to stand up straight with a curve in my lower back where there should be one, but wasn’t 4 weeks ago. We’re backing off to one appointment per week now, and I’ve been given licence to ride again, as long as I don’t hit the hills yet, and I don’t treat the rides like individual time trials. In other words, go easy.

I’ve been on 3 rides since Thursday’s appointment, and I think the hardest thing I’m having to adjust to, besides my cardio fitness level being less than ideal, is that it’s psychologically tough going out on rides which feel long, hard and tiring, when I know that exact loop is so easy that it was just a short warm-up when I was fit and well. It’s making me impatient to get my fitness back. If nothing else so that I can look at some new scenery – there’s really only so many roads you can go on when your total ride length is limited to around 30km, before you have to start heading home again. It also isn’t helping my mental game that while using Strava at the weekend, I decided to upload ALL of my previous activities which were still saved on my Garmin, serving as a reminder if the volume of riding I used to be doing in 2009 & 2010. It’s pretty hard to stop measuring myself by the same yardstick.

It’s all mainly positive though, and while I’m not pain free, the pain I do have is less severe, doesn’t set in until later in the day, and isn’t bad enough to stop me getting on my bike like it was 2 or 3 weeks ago. Right now it’s as bad as it’s been all week, and that’s no doubt due to moving my edit suite/office to a different floor at work today, followed by the 27km ride I did when I got home. But it’s manageable with a hot water bottle & some co-codamol, and I’m just happy enough to have been out this evening turning the pedals over, watching a gorgeous sunset from the country lanes, counting the bunnies on the grass verges.

I’ve not put a proper training plan in place yet, but I’m trying to get out for at least an hour every other day just to build up some base miles and strengthen all the muscles around my new, improved spinal position.